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Pierre CARDIN

fashion designer

Paris

Known as the ‘king of licensing’ and the ‘pioneer of prêt-à-porter’, Pierre Cardin

was born Pietro Cardin in San Biagio di Callalta, Italy, in 1922. Cardin started out

working for the haute couture houses Paquin, Dior and Schiaparelli, before open-

ing his own house in 1950. When nine years later he began selling prêt-à-porter,

the Paris Chambre Syndicale was so insulted that they threw him out (only to

reinstate him later). In the 1960s, Cardin’s futuristic geometric line defined the

characteristic Space Age look, while his global licensing deals soon brought to

the market items like furniture, frying pans and record players – all with the same

Space Age style. This interview took place at Cardin’s headquarters in the Rue du

Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where the sprightly senior still runs the show.

Monsieur Cardin, it’s said that you plan to sell your company for a total of one bil-

lion euros.

That’s correct. I’d like to pass my company on to somebody. I’m now well over 80 years old. A man at my age must think of the future! Who knows how long I’ll be able to carry on like this? If I were only 50 or 60 I’d certainly not want to sell. Business is boom-ing – as you know. Are there any potential purchasers?

Nothing is definite yet. A billion euros for the name Pierre Cardin is a lot of money, of course. But we’re talking about the rights to my brand throughout the whole world. Who knows, perhaps I should be asking for more. If you can charge a lot for some-thing – it’s a good thing. Why is your brand worth a billion euros?

Because I’ve been in the business for so long; that’s the main reason. I haven’t just been around for 20 years like many of the others. I started as a very young man – I was 20 when I entered the fashion business. That’s almost 70 years ago, can you imagine! Nobody’s been at it longer than I have. And, more importantly, I’m a professional. As well as designing clothes, I’m also a businessman. I always was. That’s because I worked for the Red Cross for three years in Paris during the Second World War. Part of my job was to deal with money, and that’s where I learned how important it is to spend only your own money. In my entire life I’ve never run up any debts, nor have I ever sold any shares in my company. That means that today I’m lucky enough not to belong to Monsieur Pinault and his huge company. You mean PPR?

Precisely. Nor is my firm part of Bernard Arnault’s LVMH Group. I have no partners; my company isn’t listed; here, everything belongs to me. One hundred percent. My money, my house, my name, my talent. Not forgetting your prêt-à-porter fashion.

That, of course, is the most important reason why my company is worth so much money. I was the first couturier to have the idea of selling prêt-à-porter fashion. When

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spective could certainly be compared with that of an absolute ruler – a contradic-

tion?

Of course not! It’s a question of being creative. If I lacked the talent to design fashion, there wouldn’t be anything to democratize, my company would have closed down long ago. But Pierre Cardin has survived to the present day because my collections stand out and because they’re interesting from a cultural point of view. The power of the creator is what counts. Of course this power cannot be democratized. Fashion, on the other hand, can – if everyone can afford it. Items sold under your name have included perfumes, frying pans, aircrafts,

houses, fabrics …

… and cars, Champagne and even chocolate! 45 years ago I designed a package for chocolate. It was round and silver and looked highly futuristic, like a Sputnik. The French chocolatiers found the packaging ludicrous, but I won a design prize for it nonetheless.Is there anything you can’t design?

Hmm … You once said you could even imagine designing Pierre Cardin toilet paper.

I said that to the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, a very long time ago. I had designed some pink hygienic tissue paper. Carmel Snow, the elitist editor-in-chief of Harper’s, said to me that she couldn’t understand how I could do anything as vulgar as that. I didn’t know what she meant. Everyone needs paper tissues. Every day we’re pleased that paper tissues exist. Of course, if you use de-signer tissues it’s rather sad to throw them away afterwards. But what’s vulgar about that? How is perfume any different? Perfume is also used for grooming; it’s a prestigious prod-uct, people spend a lot of money on it, and if possible it should be from a famous designer. So why shouldn’t there be designer tissue paper – or in-deed designer toilet paper? One of your most success-

ful licensed products is socks. If

you put yourself in the place of a

purchaser, why should someone

choose to wear a pair of socks by

Pierre Cardin rather than by some

other brand, say Bonprix?

Because I’m Pierre Cardin and people know me. During the 60 years of my career there have been many covers and interviews and photo shoots with me. If you want to establish a

I started doing it in 1959 and my designs were hanging on sales racks in department stores all over the world, from Printemps to Takashimaya and Harrods, people said: ‘Pierre Cardin has lost his mind; in three years he’ll be finished.’ In fact, what I did was really rather vulgar for the times. But I asked myself: Why should I only dress wealthy, middle-class women when I could actually dress all women? I was already successful with my haute couture beforehand, but it was through prêt-à-porter that I made my fortune – and with the licences of course. They call you the ‘king of licences’. In your own words, what exactly is a licence?

A licence is a means to sell my name. Like Coca-Cola, all over the world. I permit some-one to use my name and logo, and he pays me to do so. But that doesn’t mean I just grab the money – I work for it as well. I still draw my licensed collections myself. I send all my licensees drawings I make, 50 of them, twice a year – that’s one hundred Pierre Cardin drawings per year! Shirts, coats, shoes, bags, and so on. I have licensees in 140 countries throughout the world, and I have visited every single country. Alaska, New Zealand, Argentina, China, I was everywhere. Ireland, Stockholm, Germany, Spain. Japan is the country I’ve visited most frequently; I’ve been there 102 times altogether. I’ve shown my collections in the Senso-ji Temple in Tokyo, by the Pyramids of Giza, and on Red Square in Moscow. You say that by introducing prêt-à-porter you democratized fashion. When you

think about how expensive haute couture is, that seems plausible. But isn’t demo-

cratic fashion – created by a fashion designer whose role seen in a historical per-

Pierre Cardin coat, 1959

Water-repellent space-age look, 1990

‘If everybody keeps saying that Pierre Cardin produces the most visionary designs, you will want to own at least a pair of socks by him. Communication is everything.’

PIERRE CARDIN

name for yourself, you need to make sure you’re talked about frequently; constant repe-tition and reminders are important. When you keep hearing that there’s a great film playing in cinemas, you’ll want to see that film yourself. That’s how fashion functions, too: if everybody keeps saying that Pierre Cardin produces the most visionary designs, you’ll want to own at least a pair of socks by him. Communication is everything. The only difference is that I have never paid for it. You mean advertising?

No, editorial pages. All the really big design houses in Paris purchase reports in the fashion magazines. They pay for their publicity. I don’t do that – I never have! I don’t spend my money on publicity; I prefer to spend it on culture. For example, I have my own theatre in Paris, the Espace Pierre Cardin, and I stage musicals there. The press can write about them, and that’s also publicity for me. So you control your image. Can you also control the quality of your licensed

products?

I try to. But you know, licences are like your own children. You have maybe ten of them and of course you would like to look after them all equally. But that’s not always pos-sible. Some of them may be different from the rest of the family, some of them may be crazy, some of them turn out wonderful and they even look good. I have, if you like, 400 children to take care of. It’s inevitable that not all of them are top quality.But if a licensed product turns out differently from the rest, is it still a true

Cardin?

Of course! In an interview with the fashion magazine Fantastic Man, you said on the subject

of licences that the backlash was inevitable.

We were talking about the 1980s. At that time there really were problems with licensees, but I never reduced my licensing business for that reason. I just made sure that I found better licence partners and improved the quality that way. So have you never made any mistakes in your life?

Of course I have! I could have collaborated on plastic watches with Swatch. Swatch wanted to negotiate a huge contract with me, but I wasn’t interested. Or trainers: I had the chance to go into partnership with Nike. My staff advised me against it. They said: ‘Trainers are vulgar, don’t stoop to that sort of thing.’ And the same thing with jeans. The fact that I didn’t move into the jeans market at an early stage was perhaps the big-gest mistake of my life. Today, everyone wears designer jeans. Unfortunately, my staff advised me against that, too. Since then, I’ve never listened to anybody, I make my own decisions. If I make a mistake today, it will be my own. I prefer my own mistakes to other people’s, you know. Let’s talk about the image of women that you created in the late 1950s with your

prêt-à-porter. It was revolutionary.

Yes, I designed fashion for the working woman from the very beginning. Don’t forget that in those days haute couture was a much more bourgeois affair than it is today. Haute couture customers were women who didn’t work. They had a chauffeur, a nanny and all sorts of things. But the emancipated working woman, who fought for her inde-pendence, interested me far more.

Leather man, 1995

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How would you describe your designs for this new type of woman?

As simple and as flexible as possible. My outfits didn’t include high heels, hats with huge brims or stiff, sweeping skirts. My fashion had nothing classically feminine about it; it was modern fashion, in which women could drive cars, go to the cinema or travel by air. My designs were elegant, but not complicated. Above all, they had no frills or anything like that. I wanted to reflect the new realities of life at that time. Shortly afterwards you also became very influential in men’s fashion.

Initially it was an insult that I even started designing fashion for men in 1960. There had never been anything like it – a couturier who dressed not only women, but men as well! Were the men afraid that they might be made to look effeminate by a women’s

designer? Your men’s fashion was tight-fitted and considered to be quite sexy.

That’s possible. But if the image of women was undergoing change, then surely men’s image needed to change as well. And apart from that, I had to compete. In those days it was mainly the classic Italian and English men’s tailors who set the tone in men’s fashion. So I had to come up with something new. I phoned all the universities in Paris and got them to send me 30 young students of mathematics, philosophy and medicine. I designed my fashion for these boys – they were all 18 or 19 years old – and then I had them present it at the Hôtel de Crillon on Place de la Concorde. It was revolutionary. The New York Times wrote about it on its front page: a triumph! It’s all the more surprising to see how innovative your approach was in those

days when you consider that, in fact, you started out in the classic couture sys-

tem: your career began in 1944 as a fash-

ion draughtsman in the house of Jeanne

Paquin.

Yes, Paquin was one of the best haute couture houses in Paris in the 1940s. At that time, the company had 1,200 employees for couture alone! It’s impossible to imagine that these days: there was a salon, a femme de chambre, a salon de thé – the customers came, stayed for eight days and ordered maybe 50 to 60 items each season. Dressing gowns, evening gowns, cocktail dresses and so on. Everything was made to measure and the women had to come for several fittings. All this went down twice a year. What a fuss! After Paquin you then worked for the le-

gendary Elsa Schiaparelli.

I worked for her for only three months. At the time, Schiaparelli had just returned from New York, where she had lived in exile during the Second World War. I started at her house because she was known for this

The new, provocatively slim men’s line by Cardin, 1960

Pointed pagoda shoulders for men, 1979

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Surrealist shoe hat, which looked like a pump that had been put upside down on some-one’s head. Salvador Dalí had designed it for her in 1937. Schiaparelli produced the most amusing fashion at the time. I was young and enjoyed the fun. Before you finally opened your own house in 1950, you worked for Christian Dior

for three years. He’s regarded as having been your greatest patron. Why did you

not become his successor, instead of Yves Saint Laurent, when Dior died unex-

pectedly in October 1957?

When Dior died I had already established my own house. Should I have closed it again? Of course not. But Dior did indeed support me strongly. In 1949, for example, he intro-duced me to Robert Piguet. Piguet was the son of a highly regarded Swiss banking fam-ily and ran a large couture house on the Champs Élysées, with 400 employees. Dior thought I could become his successor, since Piguet was unable to work at that stage because he had cancer. But I still preferred to open my own house. Piguet closed his in 1951, and two years later he died.What are your memories of your time with Christian Dior?

Oh, he was a great gourmand. He sucked sweets all the time, almost poured them down his throat. Munch, munch, munch all day long. That’s what killed him. My God, he really did eat too much! Apart from that, he was a very charming and cultivated man. Very discreet and warm-hearted. But nonetheless it was really the golden era of Cristóbal Balenciaga – in my opinion, at least. Balenciaga had even more personality than Dior. Allegedly you would have liked to work for Balenciaga.

Yes, after my three months with Schiapa-relli I really wanted to work for him. I had a very high opinion of Balenciaga at that time because of his costumes and coats, not so much for his evening gowns. But I was unlucky. His directress was very ag-gressive and arrogant, she wouldn’t let anyone get near him. I went there three times to introduce myself, and three times she sent me away. Later, when I met Cristóbal Balenciaga personally, he said to me: ‘Really? You wanted to work for me? I would have been delighted!’ But after the third time I couldn’t be bothered any-more. So I went to Dior. Voilà!You weren’t accepted by Balenciaga

then, but nonetheless you seem to

have made your mark on the house.

Suzy Menkes, the world’s leading fashion journalist, detected a futuristic Cardin

influence in Nicolas Ghesquière’s collection for Balenciaga in the Paris fashion

shows for the autumn/winter season 2010.

Really? Well, the things I designed 50 years ago are still ultramodern today. Does that mean that the world today really does look as futuristic as you im-

agined it 50 years ago?

Absolutely. As a young man, I used to dream about how, in the future, man would land on the moon. I dreamed of computers and of how we would no longer walk along the sidewalk, but would roll on it. I formulated all these things using the resources of fash-ion. And all of them became reality. But you also predicted on one occasion that in the future no one would wear ties

anymore.

That was a misunderstanding. What I said was that in the future no one would wear ties anymore if the president carried on like that.If the president carried on like what?

I was talking about that Socialist in the 1980s. What was his name again? Mitterrand. At the time, I had sold an incredible number of Pierre Cardin ties. If they had all been stitched together, the tie would have been long enough to go around the world twice. You can work out yourself how many ties that must have been. A tie is about one and a half metres long … so? Hmm, that makes about 27 million ties?

Something like that. But then Mitterrand came along and said: ‘With or without a tie – what difference does it make?’ So after that, the sales of ties in France sank rapidly, the economy started to struggle and entire factories were closed. Thousands of workers were reduced to poverty. And all that simply because of the stupidity of that Socialist! I used to have three tie factories. Now I only have one.Elegance à la Cardin, 1962

‘Dior sucked sweets all the time. Munch, munch, all day long. That’s what killed him. My God, he really did eat too much!’

Uniforms for future female moonwalkers, 1968